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President Donald Trump announced plans to implement 100% tariffs on films made in other countries imported into the US on Sunday, denounced other countries for providing financial incentives that meant “stripping our filmmakers and studios away from the US.”
“Hollywood and many other parts of the United States are devastated. This is a coordinated effort by other countries and therefore a threat to national security,” Trump writes to the True Society, calling foreign films “messaging and propaganda.”
“I allow the Commerce Department and US trade representatives to immediately begin the process of establishing a 100% tariff on all films that come to our country that are produced on foreign land,” he continued.
“Other countries are stealing films, film production capabilities from the United States,” Trump told White House reporters on Sunday.
A Newsom spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday night.
“If they’re not willing to make a movie in the US, they need tariffs when the movie comes in,” Trump said. “I can tell you one thing, Moviemakers love it.”
The American film industry has been struggling with a series of economic hits in recent years, including the Hollywood workforce and the Covid-19 pandemic.
In California, physical production is declining amid budget cuts and more generous tax incentives elsewhere. Filmla, a nonprofit organization that permits and supports on-location production in the Los Angeles area, has reported lower than average soundstage occupancy in recent years. The report notes that competing jurisdictions, including Canada’s UK and Ontario, have doubled their stage production capacity over the past few years, along with other USes such as New York and Georgia.
However, while overall production in Los Angeles has declined, the report found that feature film production increased 18.8%, particularly last year, but this category is still well below the five-year average.
“Unfortunately for all involved, fewer film, television and commercial projects in production make it difficult to fill studio vacancy,” the report read.
Trump appointed actors John Voight, Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone as Hollywood’s special ambassadors in January, calling the industry “a great but extremely troublesome place.” Their job was back at the time, their job was to get their business back to Hollywood, and he said “we’ve lost a lot of business abroad in the past four years.”
Last month, Voight’s manager Steven Paul confirmed to NBC News that he and Voight intend to present Trump with a suite of ideas to enhance American film and television production. It is unknown if the meeting took place.
NBC News did not immediately receive a response to Paul’s request for comment. Motion Picture Association is the studio’s leading trading group. Cinema United is a trading group that represents film theatres. Several distributors releasing foreign-made films, including Netflix.
China announced new tariffs on Hollywood movies imported into the country about a month ago, but Reuters reports that it is unlikely that Hollywood will have a major financial impact as box office revenues from China are steadily declining.
This story first appeared on nbcnews.com. More from NBC News:
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